Liberating Mankind From the Comfort of My Bedroom

If You Are a Teenage Girl…

… like me, then you may find the following points helpful. If you are an adolescent girl, then likewise. If you are neither of those things or even (gasp) a male, then I hope you’re entertained or enlightened.

If you want to wear morally-questionable legwear (yes, I have done this before, despite the looks I received) even though your friend doesn’t like them, ditch it.

As in ditch your friend, not the legwear.

Your friends don’t dictate to you what you can and cannot wear, and your personal style, comfort and health (because girl, you don’t gotta be wearing thin clothes in the winter to be matching up to everyone’s approval) are always ALWAYS more important than what other people think. And let the girls who think it’s cool or fashionable wear their stilettos and hot pants, because boo, when they’re in their 30’s (if they’re even lucky it takes them that long) they will have all manner of health problems and feet problems, whereas YOU – lucky, you – get to wear WHATEVER you want then, because you have the health to go with it. And smoking isn’t great either, wait a bit longer before you start to ruin your insides, mmkay?

2. Don’t Be a Clone

You are too special and too important to be an exact copy of someone else. If you want to be a clone, be a clone of yourself. (If that’s even possible… I mean, does that even make sense?) Be yourself. URGH. I literally HATE that phrase but it is very important, and the more you adhere to it, the happier and freer (hopefully) you will be and feel in the long run. You probably won’t be friends with the person you’re cloning in 5 years time, or even 2 years time if you’re not so fortunate. At that point, you’ve spent the majority of your time and effort pretending to be this person, and you’ve wasted time and effort you could have spent discovering and becoming yourself. URGH. I keep spewing moist phrases here, but I think these are accurate too. So don’t do it. Be original. There’s only one you out of about 8 (or seven? who knows?) billion people in the world. That’s 1 in 8,000,000,000. That’s also a lot of zeros. And a lot of people who AREN’T you. (7,999,999,999 people who aren’t you, to be approximate.)

3. Education > Social Life

Once again, no need to throw away years of opportunities and chances because some girls want to dress up and go to someone else’s ‘yard’ and grind and twerk (is that what all the cool kids do these days?) on other people’s Snapchats. Please don’t do it. Don’t waste a lifetime of an opportunity that young girls in other countries would KILL to have. It’s not worth it. It really isn’t. And what is the sacrifice of a few social events in light of great grades at school, and amazing degree and an excellently-paid job?

4. Your Beliefs are YOUR Beliefs

I don’t even have to say much for this. What you believe is just that, and nobody can tell you otherwise. (Remember, OPINIONS are not the same as Beliefs. Beliefs are based on some level of system, either cultural, traditional, social or religious. Opinions can be wrong. Beliefs cannot be.)

5. If He’s Not Woke…

…Don’t fix him. I.e. If he has no social-justice awareness and is not aware that reverse racism does not exist and is not able to join in and add to your rants about social justice matters, don’t try to change him, because you probably won’t be able to. (This doesn’t apply to your friends. If they matter, then fix your friends.)

6. Boys Are Stinky

No, really. Even the ones who smell nice. Unless he’s [insert favourite literary love interest here] at this point, boys can be very useless and don’t know very much about treating girls like Princesses. Which, I must say, is a must for me. And seeing as I am (or was formerly, I don’t know, we’re still on a hung jury for that one) an Empress, that means you have to treat me like twenty Princesses. (I don’t think that’s equal, but you can see why I didn’t take Maths for A-Level). They get less stinky, but it takes them a long time. Sometimes you have to give them a shove in the right direction. But not right now; you need to be focusing on shoving your education forward, not the currently-developing minds of teenage boys. And adolescent boys are even WORSE. Jut stay away from those. They’re just terrible. Don’t even go near them.

7. Your Parents Don’t Hate You

They really don’t. (I mean, unless they do, but I don’t know about your life so…) In most cases, at least, they’re trying to help you. And yes, most parents have a pretty messed up way of showing their support sometimes, but just try your best to accept it whenever you can.

8. And lastly… French Braids are NOT French

I mean, this isn’t entirely relevant, but it REALLY bugs me when I see girls with cane-rows calling them ‘French Braids’, like HONEY did the pasty French introduce these traditionally Afro-Caribbean styles, NOOOO they did not. Stop trying to take everything, White Supremacy. Sometimes be content with the styles you have and stop trying to act like you invented our styles first. Gosh. White girls do it better? More like #WhiteGirlsDoCulturalAppropriationBetter. Also, since we’re on it, NO, Kylie Jenner didn’t make the style popular either. 🙂

So those are my few gems of wisdom. Not much, but something. So. There you go. Hope that helps.

Also, along with the theme of this ‘new year, new me’ thing (which, by the way, I think is SUPER cheesy, but very relevant) I’m going to try and move past the bad associations I have with this blog by renaming it! So we’ll see how that goes in the New Year. But I’ve got a name for it already, so it should be interesting. How sad that it will change, cri cri. We shall mourn together in our hearts, in the many places we are in. (Bit over-dramatic, but you know how I love my drama). I’ll give it a complete make-over and everything.

ALSO, I am now the proud mother of at least 35 children! (If not more, I really can’t keep up with all my children!) I’ve become the Mother of our NCS Youth Board, so I can’t wait. It’s awfully exciting having kids.

I think that’s enough ‘also’s. I’m going to have to figure out how I’ll sign off my blog too (have lots of options for this). Yay! I can’t wait for it’s new look LOL. But until then, let’s go for an adequately bland and nondescript sign-off, until I’ve figured it out.

6 thoughts on “If You Are a Teenage Girl…”

Wait, I’m not sure your definition of Opinions vs Beliefs actually works. I mean, I get you’re approaching it as a religious thing, but you’ve said that they can be based in social or traditional systems. So wouldn’t that include, then, something like misogyny or racism? They’re views shaped by social interactions and traditional systems, so wouldn’t that then be defined as a belief?

I never actually get email updates on these comments, whoops. I think I owe you a response about Leviticus and unclean meat somewhere too. Hmm.

Anyway. Not entirely certain you can dismiss a belief you disagree with as simply being an opinion; I think you’d need to further refine the original definitions, rather than simply “these are wrong so they don’t count”. I mean, obviously they are wrong, and I am inclined to ignore such people and their nonsense anyway, but I feel like one has to be a bit more stringent when defining Big Philosophical Things like “beliefs”.

You may find it interesting to note that very early art depicts this braid in Greek, Celtic and Sung Dynasty cultures, suggesting that this hairstyle had developed independently in a variety of different places.

When referring to matters of cultural appropriation, it is important to note what the history of the item being appropriated actually is.

Hello,
I do find that interesting to note, as I am already aware of that fact. However, you may find it interesting to recognise that the style which most people refer to as ‘French braids’ are in fact, NOT French braids. This is because of the fact that the name (and respectively, origin) of a braid changes depending on the technique used to braid, but the ‘technique’ I have most often seen of people referring to their braids as ‘French braids’ are actually techniques used in creating canerows, or cornrows. (Don’t know which word you’re most familiar with, so whichever). So, I acknowledge that French braids ARE a thing – which is not the point I was making, nor was I disregarding their authenticity – but the style which people are CALLING ‘French braids’, are, in fact, not. If that makes sense. Maybe I communicated this poorly in my post, so my apologies.

Additionally, my reference to cultural appropriation was focused around Kylie Jenner, in which case there can be no doubt that my speculation is, in fact, correct; Miss Jenner herself having, multiple times, referred to canerows (not ‘French braids’) as ‘Boxer braids’ or ‘Kim Kardashian’ braids. As she has not made any effort to use her wealth and status in the public eye to try and eradicate the social stigma and racism which surrounds ‘canerows’, still a socially-construed ‘ghetto’ hairstyle, she has appropriated culture.
Once again, I’d like to reiterate the fact that I am well aware of French braids being a different style of braiding to canerows, however, Kylie Jenner wears the latter. Additionally, I was not saying that French braids do not exist; I was merely highlighting the evident confusion that many Caucausian females seem to have surrounding the classification of these two different styles of braids.